Shutdown restart shortcuts

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A few years ago I created 2 desktop shortcuts on my then XP computer and recently on my 2 Windows 7 computers
The shutdown shortcut is SHUTDOWN -S -T 1
The restart shortcut is Restart > SHUTDOWN -R -T 1
Upon shutting down a message appears that the shortcut will take less than a minute
Can I make that less than 30 or 15 seconds?
For my computers less than 15 seconds will be fine
— I haven’t actually determined how long it takes but it does happen very quickly
But for my family I prefer less than 30 seconds

HP EliteBook 8540w laptop Windows 10 Pro (x64)

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Cmptrgy,

Open a command window.
Type: shutdown /?

it will give you all the parameters for the Shutdown.exe command.

According to the list /t xxx is the number of seconds before shutdown.

HTH :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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You must be a very impatient man to worry about cutting 30 seconds off of shutdown. :rolleyes:

Jerry

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Mine is shutdown.exe -s -t 00, does that mean instantly? It came from a previous post some while back….

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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Access,

You bet it does! :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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So it will be good for the OP then 😆

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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So it will be good for the OP then 😆

… who is waiting a leisurely 1 second for the action to take place!

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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“You must be a very impatient man to worry about cutting 30 seconds off of shutdown”
Jerry you are on the right track but it isn’t about me.
— I know I mentioned shorter times for me but that was just a matter of curiosity and I’m not planning on changing anything

However the real reason I like using that is because I maintain a number of computers at a non-profit organization, help many of the families going through our program and have relatives who’s patience is more than too short and use to always complain about how long it takes for their computer to shut down
— So what to do?
— Create that shortcut to shutdown within a minute so they can see the message
— Than I count to maybe 20 seconds or so or let them time it as it shuts down
— Then I say something like hey buddy that’s faster than a minute
— Now I don’t hear complaints anymore unless there’s a real problem

Oh yes, on the patience thing, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve told someone patience is a virtue especially when they click repeatedly on something and then it takes “10 minutes” to recover to get what they wanted and I let them know how 10 seconds becomes a waste of 10 minutes
— Now they know when they click away don’t bother me because I’ll take more than 10 minutes just to get there

HP EliteBook 8540w laptop Windows 10 Pro (x64)

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Ah, Star Trek’s Scotty. He admitted that whenever he was asked by Kirk how long it would take to fix something, he would always double what he thought it would take, thus garnering a reputation for being a miracle worker.

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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Scotty must have been a software developer then. Developers “know” that specs change as software is being developed. No user really knows what they want when they ask developers to write software for them! Hence (in my software development career) what was known as:

“Bring me a rock syndrome”.

I would ask “what sort of rock do you want”.

The user would answer “I don’t know, but I will know when I see it”.

LOL…software development 101 for the cynics amongst us!

K

Ah, Star Trek’s Scotty. He admitted that whenever he was asked by Kirk how long it would take to fix something, he would always double what he thought it would take, thus garnering a reputation for being a miracle worker.

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What can lengthen a shutdown is the number of drives on a system. Each one must be “Closed” before a proper shutdown can take place, regardless of what Shortcut you use.

Having said that, I personally use the …..

%windir%System32shutdown.exe -s -t 00 -f

shortcut on Windows XP. My shutdown usually takes between 5 and 8 seconds, depending on what programs I’ve left open. (which I try NOT to do).

That must, however, be modified slightly, for versions of Windows, 8 and above.
( %windir%System32shutdown.exe -s -t 0 )

I started using the Quick Shutdown shortcut way back in Windows 98 days, and I’ve been using it ever since, even though the syntax for the command has changed.

I personally want a quick shutdown, because as soon as the PC shuts down (turns OFF) , I then switch off the power to the PC, and its peripherals, through a switchable power strip, and I don’t want to sit there for an extended period of time, with my finger on the switch. 🙂
Cheers Mates!
The Doctor 😎

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Very well put DrWho. As I had mentioned my main intent of the subject at hand was managing long shutdown complaints in my volunteerism. At first I tried explanations but the impatience and lack to grasp common sense explanations led me to the plan I developed. On my own computer it takes only 6 seconds to shut down but my curiosity sometimes leads me to question more than I should but it helps me learn something because that’s how I learn. I don’t have any computer training other than OJT requirements when I was in the working world and I have found times when my curiosity helped me learn better but when it’s just a “moot question” it helps me realize I didn’t have to ask that question

HP EliteBook 8540w laptop Windows 10 Pro (x64)

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I prefer to force shutdown after 1 minute in registry. I don’t particularly think it is good to unpower the system with apps open—even badly behaving apps. Obviously you guys get away with it.

Unless you are awaiting the PC to shut off to manually shut off a UPS I see no reason to fret over it taking a couple of minutes to shut down since it does it unattended.

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In my experience, it’s normally not a good idea to force-shutdown and improperly or imperfectly close open background, security, etc. programs. One will pay for that eventually. Hopefully OP can reEducate the impatient ones that most normal shutdowns will not be measured in seconds, rather, clumps of time, depending upon what was open and/or in service at the beginning of the shutdown.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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Although I have seen references to those commands doing a forced shutdown I haven’t seen it happen at least with the command I’m using. Like I said the main reason I got into the shutdown/restart is to stop the unnecessarily squabbling of the people I help of the computer taking too long to shut down

I have also done a few experiments to determine if there is a forced shutdown going on but the simplest reference I can use is my own command. In both the shutdown/restart commands my computer should be shutting down in 1 second and that isn’t happening.
— Last month I serviced a computer where I volunteered at that had become seriously infected and took forever to shut down.
— And it still took forever to shut down even with that 1 second command

If there is a way to employ a forced shutdown I wouldn’t do it anyway as I’m not advanced enough to know the pros & cons of doing so

HP EliteBook 8540w laptop Windows 10 Pro (x64)

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Improperly and/or incomplete shutdown sequences could lead to problems down the road. For me, often, speedy boots and speedy shutdowns mask if not cause later-appearing problems.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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As far as I’ve ever been able to determine, the “-t” option on the shutdown is entirely, well, optional. It creates a time window during which nothing else pertaining to the shutdown happens. It’s sole purpose seems to be to create a window of time to allow messaging to the user, and to allow the user time to cancel the shutdown (with the “-a” option).

Once the optional wait time window ends, the mandatory component of the shutdown occurs. Applications are closed, unsaved data gets a chance to be saved, and drivers and devices are shut down. This is also when pending updates from WUS or WSUS are made.

The history of driver shutdown notifications is interesting. Earlier versions of Windows required a strict handshake protocol (I believe this was in the Win95 era), but many drivers didn’t do this properly and it became a common source of stalled shutdowns. Microsoft eventually changed their mind on the matter and so driver handshakes on shutdown were stopped. AFAIK that’s where the shutdown design remains today too.

There is an optional, more powerful version of the shutdown command available. Called PsShutDown, it comes from Mark Russinovich of SysInternals fame. SysInternals was a company that was purchased by Microsoft quite a few years ago now.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897541.aspx

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Just in case anyone reading this gets confused by terminology, “shutdown -t nn” means the shutdown will START in nn seconds. So anything other than 0 DELAYS shutdown. -f forces running programs to close which can cause loss of data, like when you shut down normally and a dialog pops up asking if you want to force close some sticky programs. Sticky programs might be waiting for a save instruction. Shutdown -t 600 is used when shutting down a server so users have ten minutes to save their work.

One client of mine was bought out by a bigger organisation. BigCo’s IT procedures stated that the only permitted way to shut down a desktop computer was to use the start menu shutdown option (in the days when there WAS a start menu…) Anything else was a sackable offence! So shutdown problems led to a call-out so a technician could hold the button down for 10 seconds…

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A few years ago I created 2 desktop shortcuts on my then XP computer and recently on my 2 Windows 7 computers
The shutdown shortcut is SHUTDOWN -S -T 1
The restart shortcut is Restart > SHUTDOWN -R -T 1
Upon shutting down a message appears that the shortcut will take less than a minute
Can I make that less than 30 or 15 seconds?
For my computers less than 15 seconds will be fine
— I haven’t actually determined how long it takes but it does happen very quickly
But for my family I prefer less than 30 seconds

If all you want is a quick easy way to shut down without having to wait, install strokeit (a mouse gesture program with an unfortunate name) and all I do to bring up the shut down menu is do a very quick down/right mouse gesture and the box pops up and I choose which I want to do, shut down, restart etc- I use it more for convenience than speed- but it is fast and I don’t have to worry about moving mouse down to start menu, every time I want to shut down- mouse gesture can be doen from any screen position- I also use it to very quickly close open windows, programs files etc- instead of having to move up to right hand close button (it’s hard for me to see bad eyesight and shaky hands-) I just swipe mouse down/right and the window closes instantly- I can also go back and forth between pages by swiping left or right anywhere on page (You hold down right mouse button when you swipe) and the pages switch to previous or recent or whatever- very convenient- can also switch very easily between open windows without need to always hit the small back and forward buttons- once you get the hang of using gestures, you’ll wonder how you lived without it- makes working on computer a lot quicker- I can even bring up my calculator by swiping a ‘C’, and snip tool by swiping an ‘S’ etc- no need to hunt through menus to find them

Anyway- with gestures it’s a two step process, but quick, with shutdown icon it’s one step- but with the gestures installed, you can do lots more besides, and shutting down is very quick- just have to hit drop down list when box pops up- but no big deal

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lansavell thanks for the -f for forced shutdown feature. Since I didn’t have that in my command I’m not forcing any shutdown and that’s the way I want it (no forced shutdown)

Nazareth on my requests about quicker shut down times of 15 or 30 seconds that was due to my curiosity of wanting to know whether or not they could apply if I wanted to do so with the impatient users I serve but I certainly didn’t explain that very well

The actual intention of my post is to deal with so many long shutdown times from the people I service. On my command the 1 that I’m using is really for 1 second but I didn’t know that but now I know.

So by implementing the command I’m using and continue to use, I do not hear any more long shut down complaints. The message that shows up the computer will shut down in less than a minute. Anyway what I’m saying is I am not an impatient person, I was just getting frustrated when dealing with so many impatient users and wanted a better understanding of how the shutdown command works. And the good news is now I have a tool that is visible and can be related to by them

HP EliteBook 8540w laptop Windows 10 Pro (x64)

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The fastest way to shut down is power fail; (Pull the plug).
It is perfectly OK with me if you do that.
This method is usually frowned upon by Picky people.

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The fastest way to shut down is power fail; (Pull the plug).
It is perfectly OK with me if you do that.
This method is usually frowned upon by Picky people.

Count me as one of the “Picky people.” :^_^:

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…Pull the plug…

Eventually, Windows will “react,” and it won’t be a pretty picture. 🙂

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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Like cmptrgy & others I have used a shortcut to shut down various versions of Windows & never had it cause a problem.

These shortcuts do not force a shutdown, if something refuses to shutdown normally you will still get the usual window pop up that asks if you want to wait or force the specific program/app to close. Usually Windows finds a way to shut it anyway before you’ve had time to read the window & click an action, the window disappears & shutdown continues.

Micro$loppy’s long-winded (designed for every possible option or level of user expertise!) methods of giving Windows any command have caused there to be several ways of doing anything in Windows & no 1 right way to do it.

These shortcuts are simply another way of shutting down, all you are really doing is saying “Windows shutdown NOW” instead of “Windows, I think I want to shutdown but I might change my mind & decide to restart or log off or do nothing at all so give me enough options to delay the action until I’m sure beyond a reasonable doubt!”

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“Pull the plug” or have a wall switch to turn the plug off might impress a user that you are not too impressed with! But then the next person wanting to use that system has to reboot in order to get on, and we all have a good idea of how long MicroSlob takes for that.

You could use Sleep when there is no activity for a few seconds followed by a Wake when another user wants to use the system, but then the system continues to use electricity.

I use Hibernate where Hibernate might take several seconds and can be invoked by closing the cover on a laptop and brought back to life quickly if you must type in a password. Hibernate can also be invoked after some seconds of inactivity. Either way, the screen goes blank on entry to Hibernate and displays the last screen on exit from Hibernate.

Another option is to do a LogOff or Switch User.

You might consider asking the user(s) what they would like to have happen and how they would like to initiate that action. If all they want is to make the screen go blank, a full screen command prompt with a CLS as the only command. Since that would drop out of DOS so quickly that the blank screen would not be visible long enough to be able to say they saw it, DOS does have several instructions which would keep the blank screen around for a while.

Or you could just turn off the monitor!

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The fastest way to shut down is power fail; (Pull the plug).
It is perfectly OK with me if you do that.
This method is usually frowned upon by Picky people.

Include me in the “Picky people”

I have seen first hand what damage can be done by simply pulling the plug.

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Yeah, we knew that as development creep, or spec creep. There’s a well known cartoon of what a swing would look like at different stages of development by IT people.. see here:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=swing+development&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=GA0gVYTpBcXsaMiXgtgG&ved=0CC0QsAQ&biw=1322&bih=729#imgdii=_&imgrc=-KQSqVhqAPSzkM%253A%3BdcjPMIEuOBgCzM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fblog.thingsdesigner.com%252Fuploads%252Fid%252Ftreeswing.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fblog.thingsdesigner.com%252F%253F%252Farchives%252F354-The-infamous-software-designdevelopment-process-tree-swing-comic.html%3B480%3B375

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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